Lenovo has said that the company will no longer be installing the Superfish software on consumer laptops, following a backlash from users who noticed the application was displaying third-party ads on Google search results and websites.
Learn more about malware and antivirus for Windows
Previously, Lenovo's community manager Mark Hopkins told members of the company's forums that Superfish would be "temporarily removed" from its laptops, but Lenovo's new press announcement would seem to indicate that the software won't be installed at all in the future. Lenovo's full statement on the matter is as follows:
"Superfish was previously included on some consumer notebook products shipped in a short window between October and December to help customers potentially discover interesting products while shopping. However, user feedback was not positive, and we responded quickly and decisively:"
- Superfish has completely disabled server side interactions (since January) on all Lenovo products so that the product is no longer active. This disables Superfish for all products in market.
- Lenovo stopped preloading the software in January.
- We will not preload this software in the future.
"We have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns. But we know that users reacted to this issue with concern, and so we have taken direct action to stop shipping any products with this software. We will continue to review what we do and how we do it in order to ensure we put our user needs, experience and priorities first."
"To be clear, Superfish technology is purely based on contextual/image and not behavioral. It does not profile nor monitor user behavior. It does not record user information. It does not know who the user is. Users are not tracked nor re-targeted. Every session is independent. Users are given a choice whether or not to use the product. The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users. We recognize that the software did not meet that goal and have acted quickly and decisively."
"We are providing support on our forums for any user with concerns. Our goal is to find technologies that best serve users. In this case, we have responded quickly to negative feedback, and taken decisive actions to ensure that we address these concerns. If users still wish to take further action, detailed information is available at http://forums.lenovo.com."
Source: Lenovo
